Monthly Round-Up: January 2012

As you may or (more probably) may not have noticed, this blog has rather dropped off the face of the internet over the last six months, beyond the occasional post. In the end it's proved too time consuming for me to write individual reviews and there's certainly no chance I'll be catching up. But I'm not quite ready to throw the blog away yet, so I thought I'd try doing some monthly round-ups of what I've been seeing.

51. Wastwater - Royal Court

This was a bit of an odd one as, despite being quite excited when I booked I went in with increasingly lowered expectations as various friends expressed their disappointment, dissatisfaction and frustration with the play. In the end, though, I came away feeling not exactly happy, certainly not like I’d been blown away but definitely like I hadn’t disliked it as much as everyone else.

40. The Harvest - Play Reading at the Royal Court

This play reading at the Royal Court was a bit of a last minute booking for me, upon discovering that John Heffernan was going to be part of the cast and since my recent conversion to his talent. It also held curiosity for me though as it was written by Belarusian author Pavel Pryazhko and since seeing the Belarusian Free Theatre last year, I was definitely interested to see how the situation in the country was impacting other work. If you do have some free time I would highly recommend reading the following articles on the situation in Belarus and the work of the BFT:- here and here and here

38. Remembrance Day - Royal Court Upstairs

I must admit that I’m starting to feel a little nervous that what seems like an almost miraculous run of excellent productions can’t possibly last. But the Royal Court is nearly always a good bet not to let the side down (though they really need to sort out a handful of health and safety issues that are making me twitch – less propping doors open with fire extinguishers, more actually accessible alarm cords in the disabled toilets). Plus I’ve had many good experiences with Eastern European plays in the last few years and with Remembrance Day by Ukrainian Aleksey Scherbak; I found a production that could almost have been tailor written for me. Which, you know, is always nice.

21. Our Private Life - Royal Court Upstairs

This is a really difficult play to review and not just because of the difficult, uncomfortable subject matter. It’s more, in fact, that I came away with the sense that whilst there was a huge amount to enjoy and admire in the production, I was having the difficulty of appreciating that through the shadow of the production I wanted to be seeing. Alas, I fear that sentence makes absolutely no sense.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain is to talk about Colin Morgan. He is one of my favourite young actors in the UK at the moment; I think he has a truly exceptional quality to his performances which make me want to see everything he ever does. But (in what I suspect will be a hugely unpopular opinion) I didn’t like his performance here. I suspect it was more a directorial choice than an acting one as it was a problem I had across the board.

20. The Heretic - Royal Court Downstairs

My second climate change play of the month and though I still think I’ll give Greenland a miss (promises of impressive polar bears and all) – I really enjoyed this one too. Given that comparisons are going to be somewhat inevitable between the two, I might as well get it out of the way here and admit that if I were forced to choose between the two, that Water had the edge for me – it’s hard to resist the eclectic inventiveness of Filter.